Censorship has no place in our society. It should not be up to you to govern what is acceptable for others to see, hear, think or believe just as it should not be up to anyone else to dictate what is acceptable for you to see, hear, think or believe. And any form of censorship is just that, a way to govern us based on other's visible morals regardless of the intent behind it.
When the Comics Code Authority (CCA) was established in 1954, it was done so by the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA) out of fear of possible government regulation. The way it worked was that a comics publisher, a member of the CMAA, would send a copy of their comic to the Comics Code Authority for screening. The CCA would then read the comic to ensure adherence to the code before the comic could be authorised to use the CCA's Seal on the cover of the book. They were self governed.
Here are the list of rules that the CCA enforced: {source}
General standards—Part A
- Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
- No comics shall explicitly present the unique details and methods of a crime.
- Policemen, judges, Government officials and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.
- If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
- Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation.
- In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.
- Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.
- No unique or unusual methods of concealing weapons shall be shown.
- Instances of law-enforcement officers dying as a result of a criminal’s activities should be discouraged.
- The crime of kidnapping shall never be portrayed in any detail, nor shall any profit accrue to the abductor or kidnaper. The criminal or the kidnaper must be punished in every case.
- The letters of the word “crime” on a comics-magazine cover shall never be appreciably greater in dimension than the other words contained in the title. The word “crime” shall never appear alone on a cover.
- Restraint in the use of the word “crime” in titles or subtitles shall be exercised.
- No comic magazine shall use the word horror or terror in its title.
- All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.
- All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.
- Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.
- Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.
- Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.
- Special precautions to avoid references to physical afflictions or deformities shall be taken.
- Although slang and colloquialisms are acceptable, excessive use should be discouraged and, wherever possible, good grammar shall be employed.
- Ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible.
- Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure.
- Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable.
- All characters shall be depicted in dress reasonably acceptable to society.
- Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.
Marriage and sex
- Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor represented as desirable.
- Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Violent love scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.
- Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the problems of love is not a license for morbid distortion.
- The treatment of live-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage.
- Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions.
- Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.
- Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.
- Liquor and tobacco advertising is not acceptable.
- Advertisement of sex or sex instruction books are unacceptable.
- The sale of picture postcards, “pinups,” "art studies," or any other reproduction of nude or seminude figures is prohibited.
- Advertising for the sale of knives or realistic gun facsimiles is prohibited.
- Advertising for the sale of fireworks is prohibited.
- Advertising dealing with the sale of gambling equipment or printed matter dealing with gambling shall not be accepted.
- Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted in the advertising of any product; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals.
- To the best of his ability, each publisher shall ascertain that all statements made in advertisements conform to fact and avoid misrepresentation.
- Advertisement of medical, health, or toiletry products of questionable nature are to be rejected. Advertisements for medical, health, or toiletry products endorsed by the American Medical Association, or the American Dental Association, shall be deemed acceptable if they conform with all other conditions of the Advertising Code.
General Standards Part A - This part of the code dealt specifically with law and crime and the ways these two societal elements were represented in comics. According to the CCA Part A Rules, characters like the Punisher, DareDevil and just about every other vigilante superhero that ever circumvented or outright broke the law themselves to bring a criminal to justice, these character violated the CCA rules. These heroes, or anti-heroes in the case of the Punisher, were definitely glorified for their efforts, yet they were breaking the law, therefore glorifying crime. Yet these comics still got published monthly with the Comics Code Approved Seal attached.
This code was likely just a move to prevent the CMAA from coming under attack as a subversive organization. Because at the time, anyone who questioned the government or any of its agents ran the risk of being blacklisted as subversive or even communist organization.
The funny thing about the whole situation is, the Hulk Comics published in 1964 had General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross as an enemy. Well General Ross is a part of the military. He circumvented the military law, violating/disobeying direct orders from superior officers many times to continue his pursuit of the Hulk/Banner and in many people's eyes, that was a form of corruption (using government resources, disobeying direct orders for a personal revenge agenda). And all of those violations went unpunished. Since Ross reported in the chain of command that eventually led to the President of the United States of America, doesn't that in some ways implicate the President of the United States of America in that corruption and doesn't that violate the Comics Code. And finally wasn't all that still published with the Comic Seal of Approval on the cover of each and every issue?
A less gray area is Commissioner Gordon. By not apprehending the Batman, even when given the every opportunity, and even aiding the Batman, Gordon was in violation of the law, and therefore a corrupt public law enforcement official and was glorified in the comics. Seems to me that their standards were not clearly adhered to or evenly regulated. That is just one of the many problems with self regulation.
General standards Part B all but killed the horror genre in comics as well as quelled any competition with horror movies of the time. Horror was still considered by many to be a subversive subject and with links to both political and religious subversive subtext in many of horror genre titles out, they likely felt it was needed to steer clear of such subject matter.
General standards Part C was especially restricting. The use of language was strictly regulated in this section as was the reference to disabilities, deformities and afflictions. So my question is how did Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, Wolverine, any of the X-Men or for that matter, the Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four or other characters with obvious deformities and/or "afflictions" ever get a Comic Book Code Approved seal?Look at the cover of Vol. 1, Issue 1 of the X-Men; a man with wings, a man made of ice, a man shooting a ray of energy from his eye (known as cyclops); if those aren't deformities enough, then let's go back to the Incredible Hulk. If the hulk himself isn't a deformity, clearly defined as a result of exposure to the gamma bomb, then his first enemy, The Gargoyle, was a russian man angry about his radiation deformed body should be. Yet still all of these still got the comic code approval.
Much in the same way that SyFy's Battlestar Galactica got away with replacing the word "Fuck" with the word "Frak", Wolverine got his own replacement word... "Shnik". Everyone knew that when the word was used it was used as a bad word, yet it was allowed because it was not a known curse word even though this section of the code clearly states if word acquires an undesirable meaning it is forbidden.
- Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.
On the stance of religion, in its specific, yet limited section, it is apparent to me that the CMAA was merely trying to protect themselves from artists and writers trying to communicate any anti-religion messages to prevent the church from coming against the CMAA; a fight nobody won back then.
On the section regarding costume, they regulated nudity, posture, dress code and physical qualities of females (only females). This was likely to ensure that they had a loophole to reject any art they deemed too risque for the times. Notice that they didn't regulate men; only women. Why do you think that is? It is because it was men drawing the comics for boys. They didn't think they had to worry about men drawing sexually suggestive men.
The CCA also regulated Marriage and sex in the comics. While divorce was allowed to be addressed, it was not allowed to be addressed in a humorous or desirable manner. Image if there had been a comic about domestic abuse in 1960 and that comic educated kids about the ramifications of domestic abuse and the plausibility of divorce as an option for escaping, meaning that divorce would be a desirable outcome to escape abuse. But the fact of the matter was, divorce went directly against most religions back then and was dealt with more like "If you get a divorce, you are going to hell." mindset.
This section of the code also dealt with illicit sex relations or sex out of wedlock as well as sexual abnormalities and violent sex. This section was really all about emphasizing the family values of the time, which in most cases didn't reflect the real world, much like Leave it to Beaver. One key thing in this section is the last bullet point; a blatant restriction on the depiction of homosexuality.
In the section for advertising matter of the code, I find it interesting that alcohol and tobacco ads were banned, but that characters in the books could smoke and drink. Popeye had a pipe for example. Bad guys could be in bars and could be drinking alcohol. The rest of the bullet items in this section are in line with the rest of the code, but I find it very interesting that the last bullet item addresses medical, health and toiletry products of questionable nature. What was that about? Condoms? Lube? "Personal Massagers"? To be honest, I am not sure.I would also like to note the line; "To the best of his ability, each publisher shall ascertain that all statements made in advertisements conform to fact and avoid misrepresentation." Did anyone ever order the x-ray glasses? Were you able to see through things? Yeah... me neither. Don't you think that those ads were misleading for the most part? How about the ad for Charles Atlas. You know the one; the skinny kid on the beach with the cute girl. Tough guy kicks sand in the skinny kid's face and steals the girl away. Skinny kid get's beefed up with help of Mr. Atlas, goes back and knocks the tough guy out. Was that nothing more than a lesson in violence escalation? In the real world a girl wouldn't be impressed by a show of aggression like that. Complete misrepresentation. If anything all it did was show that committing assault and battery was perfectly fine especially if it was because you were embarrassed in front of a girl.
What it all comes down to, the CMAA was protecting their collective asses, their profit margins and in the process they were enforcing censoring that wasn't being placed on them by anyone else at the time. So why would they do this? Because of money. If the government, religious organizations or any other authoritarian organization were to turn on the CMAA, they were afraid parents would stop buying or stop allowing their kids to buy comics and the CMAA would have floundered and eventually disappeared.
So we have 40+ years of comics that are by my account dishonest in that they don't tell true stories. They skirt around real world issues and provide Leave it to Beaver answers to questions kids had at the time.
Censorship. That is where my real issue was and remains with Comic Code; It was censorship. As a kid I never liked the comics of the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s because they felt too Leave it to Beaver: they were too fake; too happily-ever-after. The comics had not teeth. There was no depth. No drama. It was all shallow cannon fodder made safe for the masses in the name of the all mighty dollar.
In the end, the CMAA got through what they wanted through. deformities made it through the sensors in the name of the Fantastic Four, X-Men, etc. Made up bad words made it through in the name of character development. They followed the code where they wanted to but didn't when they wanted to see profits. They avoided subjects, topics and content they wanted to avoid using the Code but developed characters and stories they wanted to regardless of the code. It was cowardice. It was hypocrisy. It was dishonest in my opinion.
Until next time... happy hacking.
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